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Amid pandemic, Rome, Italy celebrates a lonely birthday

An empty street leads to the ancient Colosseum, in Rome, on March 24, 2020.(Photo: Andrew Medichini, AP)

ROME – This city has seen its share of heartbreak over the last 2,773 years.

Italy’s ancient capital has endured dozens of plagues and pandemics, but also invasions, sackings, civil war, fires, floods and earthquakes.

And now, of course, coronavirus.

Northern Italy remains the section of the country hardest hit by the pandemic, but the anniversary of Rome’s founding is a unique opportunity to look back at a history that has endured far more than coronavirus.

Popular mythology says Rome was founded on April 21 in the year 753 BC, after infant twin brothers abandoned by their mother washed up on the shore of the Tiber River and were raised by a she-wolf. According to Darius Arya, director of the Rome-based American Institute for Roman Culture, the trouble started not long afterward.

“All through the city’s history, citizens of Rome lived with tuberculosis, cholera, malaria,” said Arya, who is originally from Huntington, West Virginia.

“Life was harsh in ancient times and people didn’t live that long, but those who survived until their 50s or 60s had been through a lot in their lifetimes.”

Rome is a city very aware of its history, and under normal circumstances the anniversary of its founding would be marked by a colorful parade featuring actors dressed as Vestal Virgins, senators and centurions marching in formation. There would be reenactments of gladiator fights and pre-Christian religious traditions. The city’s mayor normally uses the opportunity to make a kind of state-of-the-city address.

This year’s anniversary falls exactly six weeks after the country’s first national coronavirus lockdown. In a statement that will replace her normal address, Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi tried to draw upon history to bolster the spirits of the city.

“Despite everything that is happening, we want to send out a message of hope and courage: together we can pull through,” Raggi said. “Rome and Italy have seen many difficult moments and we will be able to overcome even this difficult moment.”

The anniversary comes at what could be a turning point in Italy’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic. Monday was the first time since the virus first appeared in Italy in January that the number of people in the country infected by COVID-19, the disease coronavirus causes, actually declined. The number of people hospitalized in intensive care units has now fallen every day for two weeks and the numbers for new infections, recovered patients and deaths are trending in the right direction.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said Tuesday that the government would start to ease the terms of the coronavirus lockdown starting May 4. Conte’s announcement comes as other countries – including parts of the U.S. – mull similar moves.

But it will come too late to have an impact on the Roman celebrations. Italians were philosophical about missing the April 21 festivities this time around.

“Already so many things have been canceled during this quarantine,” said Giuliana Carlucci, a supermarket worker. “I missed my mother’s 85th birthday party, the play at my son’s school, Palm Sunday, Easter mass. What’s the difference if we can’t celebrate (Natale di Roma – Roman Christmas – the official name of Rome’s annual birthday celebration). It won’t be the last thing that gets erased by this thing,” she said.

Alessandro Rosiello, a driver working for the municipality of Rome, was disappointed about the cancellation.

“I always loved ‘Roman Christmas,’ because it was our holiday, a true Roman holiday,” Rosiello said, referring to the anniversary by its Italian-language nickname.

“We can’t do anything about it. We have to respect the rules. But this one makes me sadder than missing other holidays,” he said.

For Kyle Harper, a historian at the University of Oklahoma and the author of a book that explains how disease and other factors helped fell the Roman Empire, the latest developments are par for the course in a city like Rome.

“Societies tend to create the ecological conditions for the infectious diseases that eventually strike them,” Harper said. “Outbreaks like the coronavirus are part of human history. A city like Rome has seen much more of it because it’s been around so long.”

The statue of the she-wolf suckling twins Romulus and Remus dates to the 11th century, though the boys were added 400 years later by Renaissance sculpture Antonio del Pollaiuolo. It’s housed in Rome’s Capitoline Museum. Legend says Romulus killed his brother and named the city the brothers co-founded after himself.(Photo: Eric J. Lyman for USA TODAY)

Rome-born historian Giorgio Piras, director of the Department of the Science of Antiquity at Rome’s La Sapienza University, agreed. Piras estimated that Rome has been hit by “dozens” of plagues, viral pandemics and pestilences over the centuries.

“There’s no way to even keep track of all of them,” Piras said. “We know about the biggest ones, the Antonine Plague in the second century, the Plague of Justinian in the sixth century, or the Black Death in the Middle Ages. But ancient literature is full of references to many different ‘pestis,’ the Latin word for this kind of outbreak,” he said.

“The fact that we’re still here suffering through the coronavirus pandemic shows we are resilient,” Piras said.

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